);r THE À '" - ." / . / _ . "- j : ii m il ; ; \ \ \ ... 0 --- --, '" '\ / 0 0 . ... 0 " . ". ". THE TALK OF THE TOWN Notes and Comment T HA T the military budget is at last back on the table as a legiti- mate subject of political debate marks a historic turning point-an un- mistakable sign that the Reagan era, when the Pentagon was gorged with literally more money than it knew what to do with, is finally waning. During Ronald Reagan's first four years in office, military spending was doubled, to nearly three hundred bil- lion dollars a year. Noone seemed to notice that in the process the Adminis- tration had managed, by a clever book- keeping trick, to pad the Pentagon bud- get with some fifty billion dollars a year more than even Reagan's most hard- line advisers said was necessary. David Stockman, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, later said of the military-industrial complex in those years, "They were squealing with delight." Now, how- ever, with Gorbachev's implicit sur- render in the Cold War and his scaling back of Soviet military power, the ra- tionale for anything like such spending has been removed. The Bush Administration claims to support a restructuring of United States military forces for the post-Cold War world, but its actions suggest otherwise. Last November, to great fanfare, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney outlined some hundred and eighty billion dollars' worth of mili- tary-spending reductions. Measured against the Pentagon's three-hundred- billion-dollar annual budget, that sounded like a lot of money. But it turned out that the hundred and eighty billion dollars in potential cuts (and potential is all they were) were to be spread over three years (fiscal years 1992 to 1994), and thus the annual re- ductions would really average closer to sixty billion dollars. Nor was "reduc- tions" really the right word. What Cheney apparently had in mind was spending a hundred and eighty billion dollars less than the Pentagon planners had hoped to spend during those years, not a hundred and eighty billion dol- lars less than what they were actually- going to receive from Congress. In other words, the so-called cuts were calculated not against a realistic fiscal benchmark but against the Pentagon's own wish list, which took for granted the bloated budgets accumulated under Reagan. When the effects of inflation were taken into account, the decline from today's spending levels was only about ten per cent. Observers in Washington, whatever their political persuasion, agree that genuine cuts in the Administration's new Pentagon-spending request are inevitable. Nevertheless, Bush officials continue to do what they can to limit the damage. Richard Darman, the cur- rent O.M.B. director, has called the various plans for spending "a substan- tial, near-term 'peace dividend'" a fantasy, a "true Wonderland phenom- enon." Meanwhile, Secretary Cheney and William Webster, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, have '.!" ,",- t.t-: ""',.. '':;- '''' t" "_\':' -"-''!Oo. . , ï.!.i "...- . -'JJ: \!.ï.!."i \ ,- : s .. ...4.1-.-...., J :7 ""r ' ï:+!.+!.7lt(" "'-l-'-'l';;: . i' "...._._f..J - ,., i1!1-1- . '-'.\ ø.!'-' ".-'-1-' , '" · ' . Iii - -. - , . I.....' ""-'_1_ '.... . " ' I ' ij _ '}? ' +!f " ! 1i ' . . . "\'i.", ,:o("". ,... I.' --' ,. , ' I-'-'-'\- .'..- \'; , : ^' , \"!.i.!:íJ:, r.::ï\' ,\ .'\ \.. , ,, ,, 'j' \oÞ"", - '_I_I_'_'_'-' .. x X .... \ C'. #. ' :rJ.,ï.!..-r..!:í.:.!:+lf. '< ";t'. -;, c...... . + .='.: . " (I -;;S \r... ::'.-.-.-7 .- . -". -. .-:-... '. .. , 'f-ì.!."l'. ". ". .. " " . . · . . · · . . · . "' ...'t .t.\. . . · · . . . . · . · · · . .. . 'r ...ì' '!io.-.;;...! ,. . . . . . . . · . · . · . .. . . 1""' "ia0lõi; 1 ,o!,...!;..... , ''' , . . . · . . . . " . . . · · . · . . .' . r-, ISo...., 1-.,"', . . .. . . . . . · . · . . . \\ ';'".J -...;I..!' '. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . - . . 11' 'i '-r '--.; fl' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !. ":i-'i;!..Jt, . . . .. . : . : . : : : . . : ; ; : . ''' ' '..!:l,'. . . . . . . . . . . . . " . . . . . ",-..;., ... .,:- . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . "',, ":" "'<<,, ..'.(' <<.......... ..r.t'<<<<..! << .<< t 'I . .( r8). ii' -;;:-"....."", ,r(jA01 . , . , . .... ,.. ",...-- \ .'i -,, , , ill _., ;;:::;;? JCXt"lKr seized on Mikhail Gorbachev's domes- tic political problems as a pretext for warning against drastic spending cuts. Cheney has predicted that Gorbachev will be replaced by a hard -liner hostile to the West and has said that it would be foolish to base American military planning on "what fate may have in store for one man." Most Administration officials seri- 0usly doubt whether Gorbachev will be overthrown. Whatever fate may have in store for him, though, Cheney's ar- gument is beside the point. The tes- timony of David Stockman and of other students of the Reagan buildup, not to mention the lessons of the Pentagon spare-parts-pricing scandals and similar corruption, demonstrates that over the past nine years American taxpayers have paid hundreds of bil- lions of dollars more for national defense than they should have, so it is reasonable to conclude that the Pentagon budget could now be cut siz- ably without endangering American security even if the Soviets were not al- ready disarming, and even if Gorba- chev were to suddenly disappear from the scene. Last fall, William Kaufmann, a vet- eran of the national-security establish- ment, published a study that argued that the Pentagon budget could be cut almost in half, to a hundred and sixty billion dollars-or almost back to the pre-Reagan level-over the next ten years without compromising American security. During congressional testi- mony in December, Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Presi- dents Kennedy and Johnson, and Law- rence Korb, an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan, endorsed a full fifty-per-cent reduction in the course of the coming decade. And there is reason to believe that the savings could be